I am guessing, but maybe the same owner of the Tres Banderas built the one in Villa Palmeras after the Old San Juan theatre was demolished. Among the theaters in Villa Palmeras there was the Imperial. One of the two had a beautiful facade, I don’t remember which. In the 60s they played both Spanish and English speaking movies in second run since at the time they were “cines de barrio”, neighborhood houses.

Hi AGR and rrstar96. If the site of “Fundacion Nacional para la Cultura Popular” is correct, there was a Teatro Tres Banderas in Old San Juan. The article in the site was written in 2004 and talks about an upcoming play regarding the life of Carlos Gardel. During the article, the authors made a historial reference of the only time Gardel visited Puerto Rico (brought by United Theaters and Rafael Ramos Cobian. His tour around the island started on April 3, 1935 at the Parmount Theater in Santurce and also he performed twice on April 12 in Teatro Tres Banderas at the Old San Juan and in Teatro Victoria in Rio Piedras. Here is the link for the article:

That segment of the article is interesting because they talked about several theaters and their locations in terms of municipalities or sectors in the Metropolitan area. Eventhough the article claims that Teatro Liberty was in Rio Piedras (if that theater was the one who became the Lorraine, then his correct location is Santurce), the same goes with Teatro Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras in the article, Santurce to my best knowledge) and Teatro San Jose (Rio Piedras in the article, Calle Loiza in Condado if I’m not mistaken).

rrstar, I was in the film business in PR for many years and there was no Tres Banderas on Recinto Sur. I did not live in Old San Juan but my girlfriend did, at Edificio Plaza on Plaza de Armas, so I know the neighborhood well. Recinto Sur in the area of “DoÃ±a Fela’s” parking is the way it was for many many years. A bank on the corner of Tanca or whatever the street that goes up to Plaza the Armas is called, and all those buildings where we now have restaurants. No movie house there, believe me.

There might have been a Tres Banderas in Barrio Obrero, but my mother, who grew up in Old San Juan, remembers there was also one located on Recinto Sur Street. She also remembers a fellow with a limp who would walk around her neighborhood announcing the theater’s showings that day (“Today at the Tres Banderas! Today at the Tres Banderas!…..”).

The Tres Banderas was in Barrio Obrero. It was owned by the first wife of Rafael Ramos CobiÃ¡n, Rita. He gave the theater to her together with the Paramount in Santurce and the Imperial and Borinquen also in Barrio Obrero as part of their divorce settlement. CobiÃ¡n and Commonwealth Theaters leased the Paramount from her for $2000 a week, and her second husband, Jorge, operated the concession stand. The Paramount was the top money making cinema in PR, grossing an average of $12,000 a week and sometimes as much as $15,000 and $16,000 a week, a lot of money in the 1960’s. More than once, CobiÃ¡n told me that one of his biggest mistakes was giving the Paramount to his first wife as part of the divorce settlement. After Commonwealth was sold to Wometco, Rita took the theater back and was managed and booked by Junior CobiÃ¡n, a former VP at Commonwealth. Eventually Junior leased it to United Artists when UA opened the Cinema 150. UA tripled it and as we all know it was eventually closed and is now in the process of renovation.

@Bob Jensen: One of the reason most theaters don’t have an address is because it’s hard to find listed addresses. How would one normally find the address to an abandoned building? when neighboring buildings don’t publicly display their addresses.

Puerto Rico has 60 theaters listed on Cinema Treasures, only about 10 have an address, I’ll bet no one reading this would be able to find all of the theaters or their former sites, and that’s a shame, all because we don’t have the address. We don’t even know if some of the buildings are standing or if we should be fighting to save them.

This sort of willy nilly way of knowing about these theaters is not going to be of much use to anybody when all us old timers kick the bucket!

I also have the names of about 70 more theaters that are not even listed on Cinema Treasures.

Besides, lets get with the modern times, the next time I come to Puerto Rico, let me enter every theater address in my GPS and let me see all the these wonderful theaters!

I just clicked on the map above and don’t think is San Justo. It may be Cruz St., don’t know. The map is confusing. Plaza de Armas is not on the Paseo de la Princesa and Plaza de la Catedral is on Cristo St., not were it appears on the map.